A young man accused of killing three people as he drunkenly sped through a neighborhood filled with trick-or-treaters appears to have acted so recklessly that he may have committed murder, a Long Beach Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

“The imagery of the SUV striking the family will be forever seared in my mind,” Judge Daniel Lowenthal said after hearing two days of vivid testimony and seeing a short video of the crash.

His decision means the case against 21-year-old Carlo Navarro can proceed to a full trial some time in the future with the most serious charges intact.

Navarro, who was 20 at the time of the crash, is facing three counts of vehicular manslaughter and three counts of murder for the deaths of Joseph Awaida, 30, his wife Raihan Dakhil, 32, and their 3-year-old son, Omar.

The family was walking home from a relative’s Halloween party when an SUV, believed to be going more than 70 mph, jumped the curb and hit them.

Few crimes in Long Beach have triggered such widespread grief.

“In addition to the Awaida family and their loved ones, this is truly a crime against all of the community,” Lowenthal said, appearing to choke up on the bench.

The crash shattered a normal Halloween night in the well-to-do Los Cerritos neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2019.

In court, Officer Anthony Hem described the aftermath.

Candy was strewn across the grass at the edge of the park—so were a few shoes. He saw a child’s costume, small and green—a dinosaur, he assumed.

Vera Awaida knew the outfit. It was a lizard costume she’d dug out of a box for her 3-year-old grandson after a little reptile crawled onto his arm one day.

“He just loved that costume,” she said. While wearing it, he’d run up to people and pretend to lick them, as he thought a lizard might.

“I had wondered what happened to that costume,” said Vera, who wears Joseph’s wedding ring on a chain around her neck.

She spent most of this week’s hearing watching Navarro, studying his reaction to try to discern how he felt. At points, she found herself feeling sorry for him.

“He just looks so pitiful,” she said.

When she felt that way, Vera said her sister would remind her about the reckless decisions Navarro is accused of making—a series of events that will be key in determining whether he’s guilty of murder.

Many details of the case are not in dispute. According to police’s account, Navarro readily admitted to downing four or five shots of whiskey before getting behind the wheel and hitting the Awaida family on his way to Los Cerritos Park, where he planned to keep partying with friends.

“I was drunk and driving and I hit someone,” he said at the hospital where he asked to pray for the victims, according to one officer’s report.

But to prove the murder charges, prosecutors must show Navarro knew beforehand that his actions were so dangerous they were likely to kill someone and he consciously disregarded that threat.

“It’s pretty clear that he’s not aware there was a danger to human life,” defense attorney Bryan Schroeder argued.

Schroeder pointed to an interview after the crash where authorities quizzed Navarro on whether he’d been taught that drinking and driving could have deadly consequences.

Navarro said he was aware drinking and driving was wrong. He told them about a previous night of boozing with a friend when he decided to park his car and sleep it off because he knew he could get in trouble if police caught him behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol level over .08%.

Murder charges are most commonly filed after deadly DUIs if the suspect has a previous conviction for driving while intoxicated. That’s because people convicted of DUIs are typically required to sign a statement acknowledging they understand they’ll be charged with murder if they drive drunk again and someone is killed.

Whether Navarro, who has no prior DUI, understood the gravity of the risk before his crash is more complicated and will undoubtedly be a trial issue. But the reality of the tragedy clearly hit him after the wreck, according to one teenage witness.

The boy, identified in court only as James V., said he ran up to Navarro after the crash as he paced back and forth in the street.

“What’s wrong with you,” James said he yelled. “You just hit a family. What was in your mind?”

According to James, Navarro responded, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”